General elections are due by March 2008—a year from now—and so both major political parties are relying on the results of the ongoing village councils as their litmus test to gauge where they will be on that fateful day. It is clear that even as round one of the Village Council Elections concluded, at least one of these parties is in denial.
Elections will continue into late April, and the final results remain to be seen.
That is because both the ruling People’s United Party (PUP) and the Opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) are claiming substantial victory. The UDP has issued press statements claiming that it had won 34 of 47 councils or 72% of the seats in the 47 villages where elections were held on Sunday, March 18. The PUP is claiming that it has won in 60% of the villages. A win means that a party would have gotten at least 4 of the 7 council seats.
The UDP was the first to issue an official statement on the elections very early today, and the PUP’s release came, in response to the UDP, late this evening. When Opposition Leader, Hon. Dean Barrow, learned of the PUP’s claims, he laughed heartily, saying that the PUP was characteristically lying about the election results.
In its late evening release, the PUP said that it “…has received unofficial results from the first round of Village Council elections, and contrary to reports put out by the UDP, the People’s United Party has done extremely well in the traditional PUP areas and surprisingly well in the areas that the UDP was boasting of victory.”
The UDP’s release claimed that, “The first round of village council elections have shown massive gains for the UDP in villages that were previously considered PUP strongholds.”
It went on to list villages like Succotz, which the PUP had won for 15 years, according to Barrow, and added to the list of victories out West the immigrant communities of Valley of Peace, Buena Vista, and Esperanza.
Barrow told us that in this round the UDP won a majority of the Councils in all districts in Corozal.
“It is obvious that the Opposition is being deceptive in its release by misrepresenting the facts and hoping that by so doing it could affect the remaining village elections,” the PUP rebuts.
Its release goes on to say that, “…in the strong areas of Corozal and Toledo, the PUP can confidently say that it won 15 of the 19 villages that held elections.
“In the Belize District, despite a concerted effort by the UDP to politicize the local ballot, the PUP won Burrell Boom convincingly and made a strong showing in five of the other seven villages that held elections.”
Barrow says that he does not know what in the world the PUP is talking about. He conceded that the UDP did lose its bid in Burrell Boom, the biggest village in Belize Rural North, and that, said Barrow, was indeed a disappointment to the party, but he contends that the UDP lost only two of eight Village Councils in the Belize District.
The PUP concedes defeat in Independence, but brags that the UDP only beat them by a narrow 2% margin. But for Barrow, Independence was a significant win, because the most affluent couple in that community—the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Elizabeth Zabaneh, and her husband, Tony Zabaneh, who ran for chairman—were on that defeated PUP slate.
The PUP ridiculed the UDP’s claims of victory in its release, not only claiming 60% of the villages, but adding that another 18% of the Councils were unaffiliated to any political party.
In truth, candidates who vie for village council seats do not officially appear on slates as being affiliated with one political party or the other, but it is an established practice of political parties to put up and finance candidates for these elections, in an attempt to consolidate their national power and make gains in general elections.
Because Succotz has long been a PUP stronghold, the UDP is making a big deal over the win it has claimed there, but Barrow concedes that, “It’s not over until it’s over.”
On March 25, and April 1, 15, and 22, elections will be held in the remaining 140 or so villages across Belize.